The increase in processing power of computer systems has ushered in a new era in which information is accessed on a constant basis. One response has been to distribute processing requests across multiple nodes or devices. A distributed architecture allows for more flexible configurations with respect to factors such as speed, bandwidth management, and other performance and reliability parameters.
The distributed architecture also allows for a more fault-tolerant system. Accordingly, if one of the nodes is not available, then the other nodes may continue to process requests. Additional problems may occur, however, when one of the failed nodes comes back online and tries to reintegrate into the system.
Because of the foregoing challenges and limitations, there is an ongoing need to improve the manner in which nodes of a distributed architecture process requests.